Canada COVID-19 Trend

Data Sources:

Data version: 2020-11-12

Canada COVID-19 case growth rate compared to other countries

When aligned by the first day since the 100th case in each country, the total confirmed case number of all the countries grow similarly except for a few: it follows a steep exponential growth at the early stage which is resulted from an unhampered epidemic spread, gradually slows down after various countermeasures are taken by the governments and eventually goes to flat when the situation is under control.

Countries that are successful in the early prevention and control, like Japan and Singapore, show a much shallower growth with time; South Korea experienced a rapid growth at the early stage but managed to flatten out the curve very quick by an aggressive 'trace, test and treat' strategy. However, recently, many countries has experienced a second wave of growth.

Canada case number grows slowly after a huge increase in Spring.

Exponential projection of Canada case growth and the impact of the countermeasures

Since Canada is still at the exponential growth period, an exponential projection provides a good short-term forecast. In the following chart, the next 5 day's case number is projected based on the exponential growth of the previous 5 day's actual case numbers. The different countermeasures taken by the government are timelined on the chart to monitor their impacts on the growth.

After reaching 1000 cases, the growth rate of Canada is actually not very different from the growth rate of many other countries when they had a similar number of cases. The plot below shows the growth curve of Canada vs US, Italy, Korean and China after other countries' dates are backshifted. The trajectories of those countries provide different scenaria on the long term case growth in Canada.

Projected case number in the next 5 days:

Date November 10 November 11 November 12 November 13 November 14 November 15 November 16 November 17
Actual 273,037 277,061 282,577
Projection 273,140 277,590 282,113 286,709 291,380 296,127 300,951 305,854
Daily Adds 4,302 4,024 5,516
Projected Adds 4,379 4,450 4,522 4,596 4,671 4,747 4,824 4,903

Canada daily case increase

COVID-19 cases by province

Long Term Outlook

Three scenarios from CIDRAP 2020